Flickers
by Bainaku
Summary: Small snapshots from the lives of Haruka and Michiru.  Spans all seasons.  Please r/r!
1. Concrete, Doorknob, Sweetly

**Warning: **These stories involve two women together. Don't like? Don't read.

**Commentary: **I wrote these because I had a sudden mental cramp over writing, and I hoped some exercises would help. I asked a friend to provide me a few random words. These small stories, each written in no more than thirty minutes, are the resulting _flickers_—short snapshots from the lives of Haruka and Michiru as inspired by the gifted words.

I will put up more of these in the future because I feel like they _do _help me get better at writing. If you would like to help me too, please review—or email/PM/IM me your own words. If they _flicker_, I'll write them—and I'll say thank you, thank you, thank you. Heck, I'll say that anyway and always. Right now, to the giver of these first words, and to those who encouraged me as I struggled through these: thank you, thank you, thank you.

These flickers are in chronological order.

To all of you who read, review, message, question, critique, and encourage me: thank you so much. Please continue to do so.

As always, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

**Word One: CONCRETE**

The monster hooks its claws in the blasted bow over her buttocks and hauls her backward. She yelps, surprised and scared and caught off guard—she spins in an effort to free herself. She is too late. Snarl-spitting its name over and over again in the mindless revelry of brainwashed battle, the monster buries the talons of its other hand in her hair, jerks her into its embrace, huffs its hot, fetid breath down the nape of her neck. Its mammoth breasts squish into her shoulders and it giggles, "Gonna break you, pretty baby!"

It used to be a karaoke machine. It twitters a few twisted bars of Elvis Presley's _Love Me Tender_. It hitches her over its head, twirls her like a baton. Her scalp sears and her spine crackles dangerously and when it, loon-leering like a banshee, finally lets her go, she Frisbees out into open air. Her world is a sudden slurry of sky-trees-ground and then her hip hits the blacktop of the basketball court with a tearing _shuck_. Her elbow folds under her, makes a popping sound not unlike that of a cork leaving a wine bottle. Momentum snaps her head down. Her cheek scrapes over the concrete. The flesh there peels away and the monster laughs, laughs, laughs and Neptune chokes and opens her mouth, her poor mouth full of blood, and _screams_.

Another sound joins it, primal and keening and furious. Neptune's partner has arrived. Neptune's partner is _pissed_. She thrusts a hand skyward and creates her own personal sun in the studious spire of her fingers, and when she sends that new solar orb blazing toward the monster, she ensures that the stupid creature seizes and shakes and shudders until it is nothing but a ruin of shivery odd-colored guts. They explode out like streamers, those guts, before they ripple back into some semblance of the machine they were once, a scattered spread of cracked knobs, brightly bent plastic, dented microphones.

Uranus slips to Neptune's side, helps her stagger upright. Neptune has already made an ichorous ochre puddle on the blacktop.

"Your arm," Uranus hisses. And then, horrified, "The elbow's dislocated. God, it looks like a tennis ba—"

Neptune interrupts the other woman by stomping on a disc from the karaoke machine that miraculously managed to survive her partner's attack. It splinters into harassed silver shards. "Break _that_, pretty baby," she mutters.

She turns her head—her neck throbs with the motion—to cough out gore and grit and what she hopes is a rock rather than a tooth. She looks down at her awkward arm. Uranus is right. The elbow, a full moon folly rising beneath strained, bubble-bruised flesh, _does _look like a tennis ball.

"Well," she observes, "that's lovely." She reaches out, curls her gloved fingers about the protrusion, pushes. The joint grinds back into place and she smiles, looks up at Uranus, assures her, "But no har—"

The reality of what she has just done and the tremendous agony of it too slam together into Neptune's consciousness. She gags: her eyes roll up and catch her partner's. She falls into the gray foam of senselessness and the taller soldier's arms.

Later, she wakes in Uranu—no, _Haruka's_ bed with a patch on her cheek, a cold compress resting in the crook of an elbow now mostly numb. The woman who saved her is dozing nearby, her temple propped on the nightstand, her mouth yawning open in the brief beginnings of a drooly snore. She has waiting for Michiru already a glass of water, a pair of bottle-blue aspirin, a toothbrush. The bristles of the last bear an expectant swoop of toothpaste.

Partaking of that offering first, Michiru swabs her mouth free of the day's duty. Her other hand snakes out to lace through Haruka's hair, and she wonders—not without awe—how she ever did this by herself.

* * *

**Word Two: DOORKNOB**

One hotel room. One bed. Two women. Two hearts anxiously aflutter, because there were supposed to be _two _beds.

"Too tired to _care_," Michiru groaned. She dropped her small suitcase at the edge of the closet, folded her knees, and fell facefirst onto the mattress. She groped for a pillow, found one, and drew it near to hug it, growling in satisfaction. "Plush," she told Haruka. And then, muffled, "I get the side nearest the aircon."

"Fine, fine," Haruka acquiesced. She swung her duffel up onto the unoccupied pillow, tweaked Michiru's vulnerable toes. Her fellow soldier giggled protest and jerked her foot away. They studied each other as Haruka sorted her socks from the duffel, Michiru above the fringe of the pillow and across the small swell of her bicep, Haruka down the bridge of her strong nose. They flushed as one, flicked their eyes to foreign corners of the room. Haruka cleared her throat, smirk tugging the corner of her mouth aright. Michiru bit her lip to hide a sheepish half-grin.

"Do you want the shower first?" Michiru asked. "Since I took the aircon, I mean. I _suppose _I owe you that much."

"Yeah," Haruka said gratefully. "Even exchange and all—"

"Are those socks _pink_?" Michiru queried. She gave her elbow a sharp thrust and sat up again, pillow still clutched in arms, eyes affixed on the small bundle in Haruka's fingers.

The tall woman turned her gaze down. Sure enough, the socks she had absently rifled from her duffel were the bright parti-pastel pallor of a three-year-old girl's princess costume. Humiliation wove red banners across her cheeks. "They're athletic socks," she attempted. "They were in the bargain bin. They came in a pack of six…"

Michiru leaned in closer. Her arm snapped out, viper-like—she seized the socks. She turned them over in her hands, her expression something close to awe, her brightwater eyes dancing. "Haruka," she started. She giggled. She held up the socks much as she might have brandished a mirror. "They," she informed the other soldier, "have little white hearts all over them."

"They're comfortable!" Haruka defended.

"They're girly!" Michiru rejoined.

Well, no denying that. Snatching the socks back, Haruka stuffed them into the deepest recesses of her duffel and muttered, "I can't have girly things?"

"It shatters your whole image, I'm afraid. I thought the girliest thing you owned was a bra," Michiru offered. She chewed her lip and admitted, "And tampons, of course. And that little Sanrio keychain you keep trying to hide."

Horrified, the blonde choked out, "…a gift!"

"That you _kept_." Michiru was enjoying this, clearly. She folded her legs and flipped a gleeful, meditative glance to Haruka's duffel, kneading her fingers over the pillow in her possession. "What other such treasures are in there, I wonder? What other windows to your feminine side?"

"None of your business." Haruka picked up the bag, opened the nearby dwarf-sized closet, and tossed it haphazardly inside. Not that a door could keep Michiru from snooping if she really wanted to—not that Haruka would have taken many more measures to stop her either—but preliminary precautions never hurt anything, did they? Haruka intended to take a few more the minute Michiru wasn't looking, starting with a pink-socked purge of her entire wardrobe.

"Aw," pouted the smaller woman. "Does the great Tenoh Haruka have a _skirt _sequestered amidst her socks, maybe?"

"Not even."

"A frilly nightgown, then."

"Nice try, but no dice."

"Pink," Michiru put in, "panties. Red hearts this time. To match the socks. I can sense it. I have a way with these things, you know."

"I'm not even going to dignify that with a response, Underwear Extraordinaire." Haruka opened the closet again. A quick rifle through the duffel provided her the night's necessities. Turning, she displayed her findings to Michiru: an old t-shirt, a sports bra, a pair of plain cotton undergarments. White socks too—a safe bet, she thought smugly. "See?" she pressed.

Michiru twirled a woop-woop finger. "All right, all right. Your feminine side is suitably hidden. I give, I give." She sighed, smiled, and nudged her friend, "Go shower. I'll look downstairs to see if I can find a local newspaper in the meantime."

"Mm?"

"Yes." The faint laughlines around Michiru's mouth hardened, abrupt dark-dredge dents. "To look for reports of strange things here. To check for any traces of the enemy."

"I didn't feel anything driving up," Haruka murmured. She closed her eyes partway, stretched out the extra wind-wielder's perception a soldier's birthright had afforded her. Her breezes brought her nothing but night movements and nettle-near numbness. Caught in fall's fading clasp, they were cold. "I still don't," she told Michiru.

"Me either," agreed her partner. "Still, I don't mind having a look." She bit her lip. The shadows ran away from her face. She hedged, "Besides, there's—uhm. I saw a theater on the way in, and I thought if I found film times, maybe we…" She trailed off, looked hopefully at Haruka. "We could, you know…"

Haruka smiled. Her heart gave a lurching leap in her chest. She didn't mind. "Yeah," she consented. "Yeah, that would be good." And then, reflective, "I saw a café near there too, I think. What about dinner and a movie?"

Michiru pressed her hands together and tucked her eager smile into the hook between her forefingers. "Please," she requested.

"It's a date," Haruka said. She froze, lungs icelocked, pulse a rachet-run ram in her ears. "I—I mean—only if, uh, I mean it doesn't _have _to be a—"

"Good," Michiru decided. Pink-cheeked herself, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and tossed the pillow back into place. "Unlike _some _people I know, _I _happen to have a skirt in my bag. And I've been hoping for an occasion to wear it before it gets too cold." She stood. She smoothed her hands down her jeans—she made for the door. "If it _is _that kind of occasion, of course," she provided, and glanced at Haruka again. Offering her a way out. Hoping she wouldn't take it.

"Well," the taller woman sighed, waving a hand, "I guess it is, then. If you _really _want to wear it." She hesitated. Her face burned and her pride hitched and she swallowed it, hook-line-sinker. She softened the tease with, "I'd like to see it on you. The skirt, I mean."

Michiru beamed. "I'll find a newspaper," she promised. She took the doorknob in hand, spun it, stepped out of the room. Unaware of her audience, Haruka saw the smaller woman perform a little hopping skip of victory in her meander down the hall. She waited until Michiru was lost to sight and the door safely closed again before, on her way to the shower, she sashayed her hips and echoed the sentiment.

* * *

**Word Three: SWEETLY**

"What are you reading?"

Haruka flicked her eyes aloft. Superimposed over the spine of her small book was Michiru, a divinity of hotel towels and shower-steam. The violinist ruffled the end of one such towel through her soaked curls and provided Haruka a curious smile. Gleaming glass beads ran trickle-teasing down her throat, collected in charm bracelets in the hinge of her pearl-snap collar. She smelled of soap, sunlight, soft things.

"Uh," Haruka said. Capacity for speech fled her. Rendered wordless so, she closed the book and offered it, cover up, to the other woman.

Michiru took it, studied it, flipped it open again. "Your car's manual," she observed. Her fingers left swirled, seeping prints on the book's surface. She hitched the tail of her towel up to wipe apologetically at them, granting Haruka a vista of supple wet thigh the hue of polished ivory. Michiru shifted—the thigh shivered, all coiled tension and temptation. Haruka's soul shivered with it. "You've been looking at this for the past three nights," Michiru realized.

"Mmhm," Haruka managed. She looked surreptitiously down the line of her lover's leg, mouth dry, chest aching, hands clenched into fists over her knees.

"And there's nothing wrong with the car." Nearly a question, this—but mostly not. Michiru surveyed Haruka over a furl of densely packed pages. A fuel system schematic hid what the blonde knew was an evaluative frown.

"…no," Haruka admitted. She flicked her gaze to Michiru's feet. She noted—with an instant's surprise—that the woman had neglected to paint her toenails.

"Hmm." Michiru shut the book. She pressed it to her lips, tapped it against the upper one thoughtfully. Her eyes winked like a summer's sea, special and searing. "Could it be that you _want _something to be wrong with the car?" she ventured. Carefully settling the creased tome on the nightstand, she took a seat next to her partner and sighed. Smiled. Touched her cheek to Haruka's shoulder.

Haruka went the color of a vine-ripe tomato. She licked her lips. "I'm just—" she attempted.

"Bored?" Michiru finished for her.

Haruka's mouth worked. The hum of chatter from the reception downstairs muffled her mutterings. Someone at the party distantly called for a toast, and in the space between the hems and haws Michiru dropped a hand over the taller woman's knee, squeezed it. They waited. They listened to the toast together, polite to a fault. They applauded the health and accolades of a stranger in their shared silence.

A self-deprecating smirk took Haruka's lips when it was done. "Am I really good for you, Michiru, during things like this?" she asked. She nudged her knuckles to Michiru's thumb. Her flesh rasped against the violinist's, sand over silk, and she jerked her fingers away again.

"What do you mean?" Michiru's teal-trace eyebrows went up, questioning curves. She watched Haruka's touch retreat, regret in her eyes—but not pursuit.

"I don't do that," Haruka explained. She motioned to the door, to the gathering downstairs at which Michiru had been the star performer—and Haruka the stunned spectator—two hours prior, to the throngs of milling people snug in white jackets and well-to-do waistcoats. Another toast rang out. The merry _ting-ting-ting _of tines to a wine glass sent fretting fritters of tension down Haruka's spine. She shook her head. "I don't fit. I don't do it _well_," she tried. "Not like—"

Michiru took her hand. She said, cutting in with all the snipping grace of scissors, "Not like you do running, and racing, and saving the world. Mm?"

"And you," Haruka put in helpfully.

Michiru giggled, rolled her eyes—but didn't protest the assessment. She worried Haruka's palm fondly between both of her own, counting its low ridges, rills, ripples; the dew-dime droplets of water in her lashes caught the light from the bedside table's lamp. She persisted, "Why do you think you don't do this well, Haruka?" And then, ginger, "Do you not like it here? With me?"

"It's not that," the taller woman hastily assured her counterpart. She tightened her fingers over Michiru's for emphasis. "It's just—I don't toast you," she continued. She winced at the mere thought, went on: "I don't bring you flowers after your performances, usually. I'm there—I want to be there. _Here_. To hear your music. Always that. But—"

"The rest is insignificant," Michiru murmured. "To you." Her mouth quirked.

"No! No—"

"Yes." Firm.

"…yes." Grudging. Honest.

Michiru sighed. "Haruka," she pressed her partner, "do you think I asked you to tour with me so you could give me _flowers_? They're lovely, really—but they make me sneeze."

"Well…"

"And if you _did _toast me, what could you possibly say about your appreciation for me that you didn't already when you died with your hand in mine?"

Haruka choked—not on tears, but on startlement. Michiru nuzzled her shoulder soothingly, reached up with her free hand to cup her cheek, her chin. She went on, "I asked you to come with me because you fit where it matters. You're right, you don't do this well—you do it _perfectly_. You give me what I need. You give it to me when I need it. That's not something anyone could do with Bordeaux or bouquets. All right?"

"Michiru—"

"You don't fit. _Hmph_," Michiru repeated, tone full of false scorn. "You haven't seen yourself in dress pants, have you?"

"I—"

"Haruka, love. Hush." The violinist looked down at their hands, tied together in a thread of fingers. She smiled. Lifting Haruka's aright, she guided it beneath the slack seam of her towel and said sweetly, "The manual's worn out. Read me tonight?"

Haruka did.


	2. Fingers, Maple

**Warning: **These stories involve two women together. Don't like? Don't read.

**Commentary: **More flickers! Just two this time, and uber-quick ones at that at fifteen minutes apiece. Thank you, **shetan83 **and **Lakitutankhamun**, for the words behind them. =)

As always, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

**Word One: FINGERS **

Haruka limped into the living room, sat down in the middle of the floor, and pulled her left foot gingerly into her lap. She tugged off the sock as carefully as a surgeon might put a knife to a patient, her lips bitten from the inside, her eyes narrowed in abject concentration. The tea kettle ticked in the kitchen—fabric slithered, slid free. The tall woman lowered her head and studiously examined the space beneath the shelf of her toes. She balled the sock up in a fist. She sighed. She tossed it away.

Michiru, who had watched the whole event unfold with great interest from her station on the couch, shuffled her homework over her knees and asked, "What's wrong?"

"I," said her best friend disgustedly, "have a splinter." She wiggled her toes in Michiru's direction. "A huge one."

"How did you manage that?" Michiru queried around the thoughtful tap of her pencil to her lips. The lead in it made low _tk-tk _noises.

"I have no idea. I think it might have come from the balcony." Haruka drew the aggravated appendage back into her possession. She frowned, picked at it. "It hurts."

"Stop that," Michiru scolded. "You'll get it infected if you mess with it." She dumped her homework gratefully on the neighboring cushion. "I'll go get the tweezers. I'm sick of that anyway."

"Tweezers?" Suspicion crept into Haruka's voice.

"Yes. You know, those little things I keep telling you to use on your eyebrows after you shower." Michiru made pinching motions with her fingertips.

Haruka scowled. "Those little things that hurt like hell, you mean."

"You," Michiru opined, "are a big baby. It doesn't hurt _that _much. And if you'd pluck like I told you, as _often _as I told you, it would hurt even less."

Haruka grumbled. Smirking, Michiru disappeared down the hall and returned moments later with the dreaded set of mini-forceps in hand. Kneeling on the floorboards before her partner, she gave the tweezers a businesslike click and said, "Your foot." Her fingers unfurled in the space between them, expectant.

Instead, Haruka took the tweezers from Michiru's grasp and insisted sulkily, "I can do it myself."

Michiru smiled, shrugged, and slipped back to the couch. Snapping her textbook open once more, she dropped her gaze to the formulas therein and professed, "I have complete faith in your skills, Haruka, make no mistake. I was just offering my time. My patience. My touch…"

"Your sharp little nails. Your death-tweezers," Haruka corrected. Providing Michiru a silent raspberry, she turned herself toward the square of sunlight beneath the balcony window and set to work on the splinter. Soft grunts and growls marked her efforts.

Michiru hummed, toneless and occasional. She made a note in her textbook, affixed a colored tab to the edge of the page. Her nails drummed down the linear lines of her algebraic blueprints. She soon flicked her eyes upward. She watched the twitches and tremors of Haruka's shoulders under their ugly maroon blazer, both admiring and amused—she waited. She counted. She lowered her gaze demurely mere milliseconds before Haruka sighed, looked back at partner, and admitted,

"Michiru, I need your fingers."

Michiru allowed herself the smallest smirk of victory. She shoved her homework aside again and eased to her hands and knees beside Haruka, penciled proceedings left behind in a scatter over the couch cushions. "I'm sure you do," she teased. She wrapped her arms about the other woman from behind and tucked her face into the available crop of close-cut locks, heaving a sigh of pleasure. "I don't get to do this often enough," she informed Haruka quietly. "You're so tall…"

"Can't help that," murmured said tall soldier. She laced her hand over both of Michiru's and leaned gingerly back into her partner's curves, unused to the sensation of her person eclipsed by the shadows of another. Michiru's curls trickled down her neck, brushed her cheek. She felt her partner breathing in the low press of breasts to shoulderblades; felt her beating too, a slow snare set to echo through the center of their shared heart. Haruka closed her eyes. She relaxed.

But, "…tweezers," Michiru murmured into her temple. She dropped a hand over Haruka's shoulder, flexed it. Haruka pressed the requested apparatus resignedly into Michiru's anticipant palm.

They shifted. Haruka ended with her foot in Michiru's lap, and the smaller woman guided the limb to a patch of sunlight wherein she had a prime view of the offending splinter. She made an impressed sound low in her throat. "It _is _a big one."

"Told you."

"Don't worry, I'll get it," Michiru assured her partner. She clicked the tweezers for the second time in so many minutes. She made to lower them.

"Ow!" Haruka complained.

"I haven't touched you yet."

"…oh."

"Big baby," reiterated the violinist. She frowned. "Stop fidgeting or it _will _hurt. Mm? Yes, there."

She settled the tweezers against Haruka's sole. She pressed her thumb too just beneath their silver-jawed glitter to better access the wound site. Haruka shifted again, anxious—Michiru's thumbnail skittered down the seam of the taller woman's foot. Haruka yelped. Jerked.

Kicked.

"_Oof_," Michiru opined as Haruka's heel sank into her belly. She canted backward. The tweezers flew from her grasp and she collapsed sideways to roll in startled agony over the floorboards, arms buckled about her middle, mouth a dark ring of surprise.

"Michiru! Shit!" Haruka rocked onto her knees and crawled over to the slumped, wheezing form of her partner. "Are you all right? I'm _so _sorry, damn it, I didn't mean to—"

"Ticklish?" Michiru grated out painfully, cheek thrust to the floorboards still. "You're _ticklish_?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I—"

"Did I get the damn splinter?" Michiru interrupted. She worked a shivery elbow beneath herself. Ginger, she eased aright.

"What?" Haruka blinked. "I'm not su—"

"_Check_."

Cowed, Haruka did. She agreed seconds later, "It's gone."

Michiru nodded. Massaging her belly, she made to stand. "Good," she hissed. "Start running."

* * *

**Word Two: MAPLE**

The _daimon _flings Uranus into a tree. Normally this would not concern Neptune—after all, she and her partner have the unfortunate habit of encountering the business bits of various and sundry foliage on a regular basis. This time, though, her partner's head hits the trunk of the maple with a dull, scuttering _whut_. Neptune watches the other woman's stormsquall eyes roll up to the whites. Watches her drop, boneless, down the embankment behind the tree. There is a canal there, and Neptune watches too as Uranus rolls toward it.

They have fed the ducks at that canal before, eaten popsicles in the shade of the willows on its banks. Fury fills Neptune as she remembers her partner's low, lingering laughter and the gleam of crimson cherry-sugar on her lips.

She runs at the monster. She reaches it—digs an elbow into its ribcage. As it shrieks in pain and rage, she drives it down sidelong, using all the strength in her slender body, and slams her free hand into its face. She burns that face away with superheated seawater. The monster screeches, pleas, begs for mercy—while it still has a mouth from which to beg—and Neptune studiously ignores it, her heart hammering, her throat a stranglehold of sheer fear. She flicks her gaze over her shoulder.

Uranus does not reappear above the embankment.

When the beast blusters back into a salt-encrusted carburetor beneath her gloves, Neptune jerks to her feet and rushes for the tree against which her partner was fleetingly crucified. She slams her shoulder carelessly into it. She looks down the embankment at its back—cries out, "_Uranus_!" She expects—hopes, prays—to see the other soldier staggering back to her, disgustedly picking leaves and fen detritus from her _fuku_.

But no.

Neptune's stomach clenches. She rushes down the embankment as quickly as her heels afford her progress, following a trail of broken sticks and disturbed sod. She reaches the edge of the canal. Her heart shatters and the blood drains out of her face and her soul screams, screams, screams.

Haruka's body bobs gently in the canal's sunset shadows. Her _fuku _is gone—facedown, she lists in the slow, seeping tide. Her jogging suit ripples and shimmers and one sleeve of it waves like a come-hither banner, fallen away from the limb it might otherwise hold.

Neptune feels like she is racing through syrup. It takes her centuries to splash into the canal: millennia to get a grip on her partner's slippery form. The water is cold and runs into her gloves and soaks her skirt, and she loops her arms beneath Haruka's. She lifts her, pulls her toward the bank. She struggles, nearly drops her—Haruka is long and heavy and Neptune is so afraid that her hands threaten to fall nerveless. The zipper of the jogging suit bites into her palm.

She manages to drag the taller woman partway from the canal's questing currents. She rolls Haruka over and water floods from the stricken soldier's nostrils in clear rivulets. Neptune grapples with her, shakes her. The sodden blonde head drops back into the bower of her elbow like a basketball, and Neptune is seconds from panic.

"Haruka," she pleads. She gives her partner—her friend, her friend, oh God her _friend_—another shake. Beads of water in the other woman's lashes gleam like starstudded sequins. "Haruka! _HARUKA_!"

Her shriek echoes across the empty evening park, accompanied by no more than a lone starling's surprised twitter.

A sodium-arc streetlight overhead blinks to life. It sends electric viridian rills over the surface of the canal. In its effervescence, Neptune sees that Haruka's lips are a kind of filmy, November-sea blue.

Haruka is not breathing.

Neptune drops her. Haruka hits the sand of the bank and her head bounces a little and the collar of the jogging suit rucks up around her chin. "No," Neptune says. And once more, fractured, "No." She lifts her hands away from her partner's still form and presses her fingers to her cheeks, disbelieving, and the starling twitters again and Neptune—

"NO."

—remembers that she has spent countless hours poolside, and seaside, and—

"NO."

—her instructors taught her what to do, and how to do it, because water is her power her presence her _prison _and it is so _dangerous_—

"NO."

—and it might have her but it can't have Haruka too, no, no no no no _NO_—

Neptune clamps her fingers over Haruka's nose and forces open the woman's mouth. She welds her own to it. She breathes: for, into Haruka. Once. Twice. Thrice. And—

The bronze arm free of the jogging suit claws skyward. Haruka's jaw snaps under Neptune's and her spine arcs and their teeth click together. Haruka knees Neptune in the kidney. Haruka chokes. Haruka _breathes_.

Neptune breaks a little bit. Her _fuku _melts into her school uniform. Her gloves disappear. She clutches Haruka's head and sobs weakly into her plaster-spire hair and tries to say something, say _anything_, but Haruka beats her to it and asks, puzzled,

"Michiru?"

Her mouth moves in the hollow of Michiru's throat. She thinks about something. She squints in the glow of the streetlight. She ventures, raspy, "Why am I wet?" She pauses. She surveys—as well as she can—the vice in which she is clasped. She lifts a trembling hand to touch Michiru's cheek. "Oi," she realizes, "what's wrong?"

"Nothing," Michiru replies. It's true. For now, it's true. "Nothing. Nothing—" But she tightens her arms and dissolves anyway into helpless, horrified tears.


	3. Soap

**Warning: **This story involves two women together. Don't like? Don't read.

**Commentary: **Another flicker! This one's a little longer than the others, scribbled away in airports in snippets of five minutes or less. Thank you,** Fuseki**, for the word that made this one possible. =)

Have you ever wondered what drove Haruka and Michiru to that creepy puppet-infested hotel by the sea? I have. Here's my take on that.

FYI: Cooking _hashi _are chef's chopsticks. =)

As always, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

**Word One: SOAP**

Haruka cast an evaluative eye over the apartment. Shoes by the door: check. Floors swept: check. Kitchen counter neatened, ridiculous miniature palm tree watered, blinds drawn for the night: check, check, check.

"Just one thing left," she muttered. Smirking, she tapped the thermostat dial down until its little bar shone blue. The heat vents across the apartment cut out with a low sputter. Outside the February wind wound its chill fingers through the clothesline and rattled it insistently—Haruka's neck prickled in instinctive sympathy. "Perfect," she gloated, and padded back down the hall.

Michiru's key sounded in the lock almost an hour later. She blustered into the apartment with a muffled, breathless oath. Her white-button nose blazed burgundy above the fringe of her scarf; her hands fussed at the folds of her coat. "It's _frigid _out," she seethed. She kicked her shoes off and stomped the small feet formerly covered, trying to warm them. "_And _it looks like snow!"

Haruka leaned around the edge of the kitchen. She arched a brow, grinned. "Haven't you been saying you wanted it to snow?" She snapped her cooking _hashi _thoughtfully midair. "Mm—something about breaking in those new boots? Welcome home, by the way."

Michiru peeled her scarf away from her face. She gifted her partner a surprised smile. "You were listening? Thank y—_Haruka_." Her lips parted—Haruka saw they were faintly chapped. "Are—are you cooking?"

"I," Haruka agreed, bobbing the _hashi _in a flourish, "am cooking."

"Dear God." Michiru threw shocked eyes ceilingward. "No smoke!" She sniffed too. "No rank odor of singed flank steak and failure!"

"No food for someone called Michiru if she doesn't shut it," Haruka snipped back, her tone nevertheless soft. "I'm not completely inept at the stove, you know."

"Just mostly," Michiru put in, unable to resist. She draped her coat on the hook nearby the door. A few seconds more found her peering curiously over Haruka's shoulder, hands braced on the taller woman's hips. "What are you cooking?"

"Vegetables. They're almost done—there's rice in the cooker too." Michiru's arms fell about Haruka's waist and the taller woman smiled, reaching down between them to furl her fingers over her partner's wrist. With her other hand she gave the mentioned vegetables a sizzling stir. "Is it all right?"

"More than all right," Michiru confirmed. She studiously examined the back of Haruka's neck—tasted it next, a slow snowflake's shivery kiss. Haruka's smile widened into a smirk. Michiru's arms tightened.

The violinist nevertheless eased her mouth away to sigh, "What brought on such domesticity, I wonder? Did you break something? Or maybe you forgot an appointment and you're hoping this will make me forget it too, so I don't get angry—"

"Such small faith," groused Haruka. She stirred the vegetables again, more slowly this time. A few stuck to the wok. "I can't make dinner for my girlfriend on a whim? Said dinner is, for your information, finished." Lifting her fingers from Michiru's skin, Haruka flicked off the burner.

Michiru withdrew her touch too. She took a step back—then one more. Her socks rasped on the kitchen tile. "What?" she ventured.

"What?" Haruka echoed. She looked over her shoulder, arched a brow. Michiru stood with an arm's length between them now, jaw slack, lips pursed. Her eyes glittered like stolen gems in the room's fluorescents. "Hm?" Haruka dared.

Michiru recovered—almost. "I guess you can," she allowed. She turned and made for the cooker. With careful fingers she opened it, eyed the fresh puffy kernels of rice inside. "This looks good."

"Thanks. Do you want a bit now?"

"Let it cool a little?" Michiru declined.

"Sure." Haruka tucked the cover over the wok, the _hashi _wedged in its seam like a strange elbow. "Not too long, though. The zucchini will cook into nothing and—"

"You've never called me that before," Michiru interjected.

Haruka grinned. "I've never called you what?" she teased. She stepped to the sink and washed her hands at it, the froth of the soap crawling in whitecapped waves over her knuckles.

Michiru scowled at her, the expression softened still by a wonder her widened eyes could not cloister. "Your _girlfriend_, Haruka. You've never called me your girlfriend before now."

"Aren't you?"

"Aren't I what?"

"My girlfriend," Haruka reminded the smaller woman. She turned to face Michiru and braced her palms against the kitchen counter. She delved her thumbs into her back pockets—she smiled. Wiggled her brows. "Mm?"

Michiru's mouth opened. She gaped at her partner and a flush crept to settle its carmine cape over her cheeks. "Well," she managed. She struggled—fell quiet. She lowered her gaze to watch Haruka through her lashes. "I'll take it now," she finished.

Haruka cocked her head. "Aa?"

"Dinner. I'll take it now, if that's all right." The violinist spun on a heel and slipped down the hall toward the bedroom they shared. "Make me a bowl? No cabbage," she called back. She disappeared around the doorjamb in a flicker of sea-shaded locks.

Chuckling, Haruka ferreted a bowl out of the shallow cabinet overhead and spooned steaming rice from the cooker's courtesy. She selected vegetables next, taking care to snip out shreds of Michiru's detested cabbage. When she was finished, she swirled the bowl in a precise palm and padded into the living room, pausing only to take a magazine from the rack behind the barstools.

She settled on the couch. She could hear Michiru fiddling with things in the bathroom—she listened to the woman drop something, mutter in frustration. Arranging herself beneath their only loose blanket on the couch's farmost cushion, Haruka balanced the bowl on her knee, snapped open her magazine, and waited.

"Haruka," Michiru scolded a few minutes later, "it's freezing in here! Did you forget to turn the thermostat on when you got home?"

"Maybe I did," Haruka lied. "Check for me?"

Footsteps in the hall, Michiru's own elegant stride. "You did," she responded. She came to the fore of the living room, wearing an annoyed frown and a set of pale pink pajamas. She accused, "I can almost see my breath."

"I'm sorry, Michiru," Haruka murmured. She put on her best apologetic face and offered up the bowlful of steaming rice. "At least dinner's hot, huh? And I have the blanket right here."

"Hmph," Michiru opined, a smile tugging the corner of her mouth aright.

"Come share," the taller woman invited her partner charitably. "You can stick your feet against my legs."

"Sure about that?" Michiru wondered. "They're pretty cold, Haruka."

"I'll take my chances," affirmed the blonde. She lifted the bowl and blanket and jiggled her elbow. "Get under here."

Michiru provided Haruka a suspicious stare. Curling her toes over the chilly floor, though, she crossed the room and ladled herself against the other woman, opening her palms in request of the promised meal. "No cabbage?" she murmured.

"No cabbage," Haruka verified. She settled the bowl gently in Michiru's expectant palms.

Michiru took up the spoon and asked, bracing her feet against Haruka's warm calves, "You planned this, didn't you?"

"Absolutely," Haruka confessed. She flipped the blanket over Michiru's legs.

"Why?"

"I wanted to sit with you on the couch like this. You know, close. Besides, when it's cold in here and you wear those pajamas, I can see your—"

Michiru swatted the other woman's thigh. "That's not what I meant and you know i—_wait_. How did you know I'd wear these pajamas?"

"All your others are in the laundry," Haruka relayed victoriously. "I noticed yesterday when I was looking for that receipt you wanted."

"Your powers of observation," noted Michiru around a bite of rice and broccoli, "are astounding when you use them."

"I use them all the time!" Haruka protested.

"The businessman you clipped this morning might beg to differ. Mm! Haruka, this is good!"

"He was crossing illegally. I noticed _that _and thought I'd teach him a lesson. I bet he'll use the crosswalk next time, won't he?" Haruka looked in half-exasperated fondness down at her fellow soldier. "Are you really _that _surprised I can cook?"

"Asks the woman who once microwaved tinfoil and a fork in the same night."

"Oi oi, cut me a break. I was tired."

"Mmmhm." Michiru gave the taller woman a knowing look. She said no more about Haruka's culinary prowess, however, preferring instead to work through her dinner in contented quiet.

Similarly satisfied, Haruka opened her magazine again. She found an article on fuel injection systems and fell into it with a will. Michiru tucked her cheek to the available shoulder as she nursed her meal; beneath the blanket, Haruka curled an arm about Michiru's hips.

"Want to tell me why you planned this?" Michiru asked again when only a few lone grains of rice were left in her bowl.

Haruka shuffled pages away from the article, eyeing Michiru sidelong over a column on carbines. "I already told you. Nightshirt. Nip—"

"If that's the _only _reason you did all this," threatened the aquamarine-haired soldier, "you're going to be spending a long time on this couch. _By yourself._"

Closing the magazine and tucking it aside, Haruka muttered, "All this? It's not so much, Michiru."

"It's—it's… it _is_," Michiru disagreed. She leaned forward far enough to deposit the bowl on the coffee table. That done, she secured both her arms about one of Haruka's and tugged it insistently. The blanket bobbed. "It's different. It's…"

"Normal?" Haruka provided.

Michiru shivered, startled. Haruka hooked her closer. "Normal," the former permitted. "And we don't _do_ normal, Haruka."

The blonde shook her head. "You mean we haven't done it before. We _couldn't _do it before. We—we didn't deserve it, I guess." She flicked her eyes over Michiru's profile: lingering lashes, cherry-tone cheeks, stonewall chin. She saw agreement there, a guilty jaw-clench. She lowered her voice and said conspiratorially, lest fate was listening and felt like throwing a curve ball, "I think that's changed now. Don't you?"

"Changed?" Michiru projected. She said it quietly too, a secret whisper.

"Yeah. We're not… we don't have to…" Haruka stopped. She thought about it. She offered carefully, "No more nightmares. No more sacrifices. There's responsibility—the one we were born with, sure. But that's just another thing to tie us together, isn't it? There's nothing else between us. We're—we're _free_."

Michiru considered. Finally she flexed her fingers and instructed, "Say more about that."

Haruka bit the inside of her cheek. She drummed her free fingers on the arm of the couch. She said, "We were going to kill three people, first. For the talismans—for the world. We were willing." Michiru nodded. Haruka continued, "When that wasn't necessary anymore, we—we were going to kill that Tomoe girl."

"Our duty," Michiru reminded her partner.

Haruka shrugged. She smiled, a hard thing—sincere too, if not sequestered into the shadows at the corner of her mouth. "Our duty," she acquiesced, "made us almost-murderers. And almost-murderers don't deserve this."

Haruka slid her hand down Michiru's thigh beneath the blanket. The pajama fabric bunched under her fingertips.

Michiru allowed this. Slanting her eyes as she arched into Haruka's touch, she maintained, "But you said that's changed. How? I'm waiting for you to tell me that, Haruka. I want an explanation as to how we went from not deserving this to deserving it, and I want it now." The blanket stretched taut. Michiru bit her lip, squirmed. "I also want—"

"Patience," Haruka scolded. Michiru made a mewling noise of protest. Unable to deny her, Haruka moved her fingers again, peeling the pajamas lower. "I had to watch you die," she admitted. "And you… you had to go first. You had to because you came for me and I wasn't good enough to save you—"

"Haruka—!"

"Ssh. It's true and—" Haruka's mouth worked. She closed it. She took a deep breath, went on, "We had to learn humility, Michiru, didn't we? We had to learn we couldn't do this alone. We had to learn to trust that girl."

Michiru studied her partner. She asked, "Do you trust her, Haruka?"

For the second time in so many minutes, Haruka shrugged. "I trust her to be naïve enough to think she can save the world," she murmured. "She did it once. Saved the world, I mean. And I think a part of me believes she has a fair shot at doing it again."

Michiru smiled. "She's special," she opined, and Haruka chuckled her agreement.

The taller of the pair put forward after a thoughtful pause, "We ate our humble pie. We're not almost-murderers anymore. Maybe later we will be again. But not now. Not… not_ right _now." She shifted her hand, palmed a hip. She kneaded. Michiru stretched appreciatively into the motion and Haruka contended, "We really _are _free, Michiru. And I think we've done enough that we've earned… no, we _deserve_ the chance to be normal. Even if it's just for a little while."

Turning her gaze to the empty bowl on the coffee table, Michiru said, "Hm." It was a sound of neither promise nor peril.

Nervous, Haruka drove to the point. "So there's no reason," she summarized, "I shouldn't be able to make you dinner. And scheme to see you in scanty nightwear. And call you my girlfriend." She hesitated. She persisted, "I wanted to do it all before. I wanted to—to give you what _I _felt like you deserved. But every time I tried, there was a battle or—or I burned the rice beyond repair and—let's get away from here. Okay?"

Startled, Michiru jerked her eyes from the bowl back to her partner. "What?"

"Let's get away from here," Haruka insisted. "The mission's over. There's nothing else here for us. Let's… let's make up for lost time. Drive along the coast as far as we can. Or—I don't know, Michiru, I don't _care _as long as it's with y—mmph!"

Michiru cut off Haruka's desperate splutter in a kind, kindling kiss. She kept the taller woman a long time. When she did deign to draw back, she cupped Haruka's crimson cheeks and said, "Yes. To both questions."

"Uh?" Haruka voiced.

"Yes—let's get away." Michiru laughed. Leaning in for another kiss, she agreed, "And yes, Haruka, because I could care _less_ whether either of us deserves it now, or if we ever have or will—_yes_. Of course I'm your girlfriend."


	4. Tempo

**Commentary: **Five minutes, five hundred words. Just a quick scribble before bed.

Enjoy!

* * *

**Word One: TEMPO**

The violin case bumps her thigh as she walks. Beneath her booted heels, snow crunches—she leaves behind a line of staggery dark footprints on the white-glazed sidewalk. She sighs into her scarf. The wool scratches at her lips.

Her head throbs: not with pain, but with music. The notes cluster between her temples. Their remnants shiver nearby her lashes, caught still in the cooling strands of her hair like dew in a spider's web. She mouths soundless meters; her bow arm ghosts lightly to and fro, and her fingers mime the flexes of a melody's tempo gone _vivace. _

She stops suddenly, brow furrowed. Other members of the orchestra departing practice step around her, a seething mass: but they are like any sea and Michiru, who knows depths better than anything, is at no risk of drowning. Her peers flow and ebb and eventually they are gone, leaving her alone there at the corner of the auditorium. That very building's shadow eclipses her. Chilled, she shivers.

She refuses to move, though, because something is wrong.

The beat in her head is off by a quarter.

Closing her eyes, she hitches the violin case up onto her shoulder such that passersby might think she intends to play it like the instrument it holds. She runs through the chorus, pretending to parse out a piece only she can hear.

She lags. Once—and then again, and a third time too. No matter how hard she tries, she is unable to keep proper time.

Graceful and eloquent of manner though Michiru might be, she still stomps her foot in frustration. Slush spatters.

A shushing sound in the street at her back—a mechanical hum. Leather squeaks. The scent of warm shores and distant sunlight cuts through the winter's chill, bright as a lemon, and lingers over the fringe of her scarf.

"Oi!" a familiar voice calls to her.

Michiru turns, letting the violin case slide down her arm to its rightful place at the tips of her fingers. Her skirt flutters at her knees; her wrist twinges, and the handle of the case beneath it gives a whispery creak.

The car idling in the street is a balmy almost-buttercream. Its driver, her elbow crooked out the window, flicks two fingers to Michiru in a hey-there-pretty-lady salute. She is blonde, and sharp-eyed, and her chin sports a healing scrape straight down the center like a cleft.

She smiles and says, "Need a ride?"

The words congeal in the air between them, a pale puff come and gone.

Michiru steps from the sidewalk and around the nose of the car. The other woman leans over and unlocks the passenger door for her—nudges it open. Michiru folds herself down into the waiting seat, propping her violin case between her knees. The heater engulfs her in its prickling exhale. She leans into its current, closing her eyes and the door.

The driver chuckles. The car rolls forward.

The beat in Michiru's head does too, whole again.


	5. Snowman

**Commentary**: Much gratitude to **lostinhersong **for the word that inspired this flicker. =)

Ten minutes, a thousand words.

Happy holidays, everyone, and thank you.

* * *

**Word One: SNOWMAN**

"It's crooked."

"It is _not_."

"…definitely crooked. Malformed. Hideously ugly."

Michiru swatted her lover's arm, sending up a puff of powdery frost. She pouted, "Don't make fun of our snowman, Haruka. You'll give him image issues."

Lips pursed behind the fringe of her checked scarf, Haruka cast skeptical eyes over the sagging snow-person nearby her elbow. "Look at him, Michiru," she nudged. "He's all… shlumpy on that side. He _should _have image issues. He's the Quasimodo of our winter wonderland here. All he needs is a cathedral and some big holiday bells to ring—"

"Keep tormenting him and you won't be ringing _my _holiday bells," threatened Michiru. Her brows drew together in a scowl under the shadow of her partner's encircling arm.

"Oh, for—!" the other woman sputtered. "He's made of _snow_!"

"And you, Haruka? You are made of _ice_. Or your heart is." Slush crunched underfoot as the smaller of the pair gestured emphatically. "Look at him! He's _adorable_! How could you even begin to think there's anything wrong with him?"

Dubious, Haruka permitted herself another glance at the snowman: at his misshapen middle, at his uneven cedar-chip eyes. She looked at Michiru next, the violinist's face all indignant petulance. Sucking in a breath, the wind soldier opened her mouth to list all the flaws of the snowman—

"We made him_ together_," Michiru interjected, a final warning.

Haruka's jaws snapped shut. She was stubborn, sure, but not stupid, and she hadn't spent years fighting otherworldly demons only to walk into a deathtrap set by her own partner.

"He's"—and oh, it hurt to say it, knives in her throat and nails on her tongue; she spat it out anyway—"kind of cute."

Michiru beamed. Hooking her arm through Haruka's, she gave it a gentle tug. "I thought so." Not one to rub salt into raw wounds _too _vigorously, she pressed on, "Why don't we go inside now and warm up? Or," she squeezed Haruka's bicep, teasing, "did you want to try to hit me with a few of your famous snowballs again?"

Reaching aside, the blonde took up a handful of the signature white stuff in her mitten, spun the smaller woman sideways, and dumped her fist's contents down the back of the available sweater. Michiru shrieked, half-laughter, half-curse. Dancing on tiptoe for the trickle of cold on her spine, she chased her smirking counterpart into the parking garage beneath their apartment building. They slipped on the ice at the walk together—they clutched at one another to keep from falling. Eventually, per Michiru's suggestion, they slipped back inside.

Some hours later, a mug in hand and a new sweater pulled over a flushed torso, Michiru crept to the window and looked out across the complex's courtyard. As Haruka, hungry still, drifted near to taste the back of her neck, the violinist sipped her tea and observed, "Look, Haruka—you can see him from here."

The note of fondness in Michiru's voice drew Haruka's gaze reluctantly aloft. Rocking on the ball of her foot to see over turquoise curls, she glimpsed Michiru's subject: their snowman, a lumpy dark silhouette in the courtyard's pale gray haze. She squinted. Unease and discontent prickled in her belly. Before she could stop herself, she muttered, "Something's wrong there."

A pause: a palpable decrease in the room's temperature too. Stepping neatly from Haruka's touch, Michiru turned to frown at her friend. "What?" she pursued.

"I—"

Holding up a hand, Michiru shook it—just once!—and said, "No. Never mind."

"But—"

"_No_," snapped the smaller soldier. Hurt unmistakable in the sea of her eyes, she withdrew from the slant of faint light by the window and stepped back into the bedroom they shared. She closed the door behind her.

_Snick_, admonished the lock as it clicked into place.

"Shit," agreed Haruka.

Sighing through her nose, she aimed a glower at the creation in the courtyard below. The sight sent another pang of restlessness crawling through her insides. Her chest tightened; her palms itched. For several moments she stared through the window, trying to determine just _what _about the snowman was bothering her so badly.

When she finally saw it, she exhaled between clenched teeth and, resigned, moved down the hall to wiggle her feet back into their boots.

She came back into the apartment at sundown, her face a numb sheet and her hands taut with cold in the clutches of her mittens. Checking the clock on the stove, she nodded and called, "Michiru! We need to leave now if I'm driving you to practice!"

Seconds ticked past—but Michiru, ever prudent, emerged soon enough from the bedroom. Instrument case clutched in hand, scarf wound about her throat, she looked ready to take on winter. She also, Haruka realized, looked to be in no mood for conversation.

She reinforced this image by saying nothing to Haruka on the ride down the elevator.

Quiet persisted despite Haruka's best efforts at civility: an arm extended for Michiru to clutch in their progress across the ice; a car door pulled open for the violinist; a pair of warm gloves waiting on the passenger seat.

They pulled out of the parking garage and rolled past the courtyard. Michiru said finally, "Stop the car."

Haruka obligingly stopped the car.

"Why are there two snowmen out there now?" demanded her partner after a short, startled pause.

"I told you there was something wrong there," Haruka replied. Beneath her fingers the clutch idled; frigidly irritable, the engine gave a low sputter too. Her cheeks burned. She continued, "He looked lonely. So I gave him a—a friend."

Another pause.

"But Haruka," Michiru murmured, wondering, "he's made of _snow_."

"Yeah," grouched the blonde. She threw the car into gear again—they crunched resolutely forward. "And my heart's made of ice."

Michiru's hand covered hers on the clutch. With a squeeze of her partner's chilled knuckles and a soft laugh, she looked at Haruka sidelong and professed, "Oh… maybe not."


	6. Lure, Scrutiny, Worth

**Commentary: **Look who's not dead!

Five minutes, five hundred words. I would have written more, but I'm working on something else. Hmm, I wonder what? =)

I hope you enjoy these.

Thank you for your patience.

* * *

**Word One: LURE**

* * *

"You're hurting me."

"I'm not."

"You _are_. Your hands, they're so hard—they're _hot_, Haruka." Beneath those hands a pale body twisted. Its owner said, "Stop it."

"If I stop, you won't, you know…" Haruka added a finger. Michiru shuddered.

"Fine. Don't stop. _Don't_. But be _gentle_—nn!" Thrusting her face into the cradle of her arms, the smaller woman writhed. The sheets bunched, pulled, bunched again, scuttering down the edge of the bed. Shadows collected in their folds and both women ignored them, each too engrossed in the other to care about the mess they were making.

"Sorry. This stuff—it's slippery, I can't—"

Her touch plunged low; her fingers coiled, the nails scraping. Michiru voiced a startled moan.

Between them, something snapped.

Haruka paused, eyes slanted, breath held. Michiru fell limp beneath her. Overhead the fan blades spun and snickered, and after a moment the taller of the pair said, "How's the hitch?"

Thoughtfully Michiru rolled, flexed her shoulders. "Gone," she sighed. Fetching a glance backward, she smiled. "Thank you for the massage."

A spatter of lotion lingered in the contour of her spine. Reaching to rub it into nothing, Haruka swallowed hard. She provided, "No problem."

* * *

**Word Two: SCRUTINY**

* * *

At first she thought it was an accident.

Haruka glanced up over the edge of her magazine, idle, and caught Michiru looking at her. The other woman twitched, startled—smiled, looked down again. Her fingers fiddled around the edges of her book. Arching an eyebrow, Haruka waited for an explanation that never came, eventually chalked it up to coincidence, and went back to her editorial on suspension systems.

She made it two paragraphs before the faint itch of suspicion meandered into her perception. Discreetly she angled her head aright, peered through her lashes and—oho! For the second time she found Michiru's eyes on her, combing over her intently, maybe even _hungrily_.

A gentleman, Haruka thought, would graciously overlook this severe breach of etiquette.

Haruka, who was no gentleman, flipped a page and said, "I see what you're doing there, you know." She closed the magazine, dropped it into her lap. Leaning across the arm of her chair, she touched Michiru's soft cheek—where sudden roses bloomed—and whispered, "You can look at me if you want. I don't mind."

Michiru delicately cupped a hand over Haruka's, pitched her voice low, and murmured back, "You have something in your teeth."

* * *

**Word Three: WORTH**

* * *

"I think," Uranus began, and stopped, and looked at Neptune. Her partner blinked back at her, eyes round and lit like marbles. The wind cut at them, a thousand sharp fingers tugging, twisting. The alleyway stank. They were tired. Ahead of them the night stretched long and terrible and unending, a misery of monsters, and maybe even before bed they would know murder too.

In the meantime, though, Uranus tipped her head and resumed, grave, "I think, just maybe, I have lost all feeling in my ass."

From the darkness rose a giggle. It was the world.

Redeemed, Uranus smiled.


End file.
